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First Comes Summer
First Comes Summer: A Novel | Maria Hesselager
2 posts | 3 read
The spellbinding story of a young woman’s dangerous passion as it plays out over the course of an eerie summer In their remote Viking settlement, Folkvíand her brother, Áslakr, have always been close—unnaturally close. They’ve grown more intimate still as Folkví learns her shaman mother’s craft, as men regard her with newly devouring eyes. Then illness carries off their parents, and the nest of home is shattered. Áslakr sets off on his first expedition, abandoning Folkví to the dark of an endless winter. When he returns, he’s done the unthinkable: He’s found someone else to love. Sick with grief, Folkví rages to the gods where they sit at the foot of an ancient tree, contemplating the twisted passions of humans that play out in the face of an ever-approaching end of days. Will none of them save her now? Very well, Folkví will save herself. The wedding date is set. But first comes a fateful summer. . . Deeply unsettling and brilliantly imagined, First Comes Summer captures the terror of losing the world you’ve always known—and the uncanny extremes to which you might go to hold on to it.
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review
GerardtheBookworm
First Comes Summer: A Novel | Maria Hesselager
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Mehso-so

Beautiful prose gets lost in the translation in this literary novel set during the Anglo-Saxon period. A Viking brother and sister involved in a taboo situation (think Jamie and Cersi Lannister) has their connection threatened when sis is trained to be a village shaman and bro takes a spouse after a battle expedition. Cut to some confusing folklore and Norse mythology, and the plot becomes convoluted and confusing. Meh, for me.

review
PirateJenny
First Comes Summer: A Novel | Maria Hesselager
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Pickpick

This I the story of Folkvi and Aslakr, siblings who happen to be very close and what happens when Aslakr becomes betrothed to Gerd. Set in the Viking age, when omens and magic are a part of everyday life, this is a slow burn literary horror with an ending that will stick with you.